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  “We ready?”

  “For what?” Rodriguez said, his voice shaking, his eyes darting back and forth.

  Guy’s close to losing it, and we’re not even in the cave yet.

  “Okay,” Ivan said, letting out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Let’s go see what my brother’s been up to.”

  ~ * ~

  36

  TRIP WIRE

  This sucks! Nahara kept thinking.

  He’d seen enough people in neuro-collars before, but he’d never experienced it.

  The worst part was that his mind remained perfectly lucid. He could hear and see and smell everything, but his sense of touch was gone.

  He knew—rationally—that he was sitting in an SRV seat, but he had no sensation of his weight on the seat... or the seat pressing against him.

  When the gunner had punched him—sucker punched—his head had rocked back, but there hadn’t been the slightest flicker of pain.

  Spots of blood drying to a dark brick red splattered his shirtsleeve.

  It took immense effort simply to move his eyes, and the inability to blink made them sting. He measured the impossibly slow passage of time by the progress of the sun and shadow that moved so damned slowly across the cabin wall and floor.

  He had no idea how long he’d been here.

  There hadn’t been a “night,” but then again, he had no idea what this planet’s rotational rate was. A “day” could last hours or weeks beyond the standard twenty-four.

  All the while, his anger—at Jordan and Annie, and at Kyros for luring him into this, and the others, the ones in the World Council who had arranged this transfer of data—grew stronger.

  But no blame for himself.

  He had a chance to make a fortune. To escape his life, his family, the work for the authority, so dull and boring.

  He could escape.

  He lost himself in such thoughts ...

  But then at some point in the meaningless, timelessness of his situation, he saw something.

  At first, he didn’t believe it.

  He was convinced a shadow had passed across the sun or that his vision was going after being strained for so long.

  But a timeless moment later, he knew what he was seeing was real.

  A shadow was cast across the floor at his feet, and up onto the wall. It was elongated but clearly the head and shoulders of a person.

  And then—bracing himself for whatever was about to happen—the SRV hatch door was forced open.

  He had company.

  ~ * ~

  “You sure you don’t want to sit this one out, Doc?” Sinjira asked as she turned to face Rodriguez.

  He regarded her with a look she had seen all too often in her dealings with people—especially men, but more than her fair share of women, too.

  “Are you kidding? Stay here by myself?”

  She adjusted the chip in the node on her head and checked the levels on her handheld.

  “This is going to be KC.”

  “KC?”

  “Killer content...”

  “Everyone ready?”

  Ivan’s voice, sharp and sudden, echoed in the cave opening.

  Sinjira turned to face him.

  The cave entrance ahead.

  Rodriguez took a step back and, waving his hand loosely, indicated that she should go in front of him.

  Polite ...or a coward who wants to be at the back of the line in case shit gets real?

  It didn’t matter because Sinjira was feeling just the opposite.

  She wanted to be as close to the action as possible.

  “I’m all set, boss. Cannot wait.”

  Ivan nodded, turned, and then led them into the cave.

  ~ * ~

  Ivan saw the body first.

  Huge ... probably four meters tall, stretched out to its full height.

  The good news: it was dead.

  The bad news: he had no idea what species it was... had never seen anything like it before in all his travels.

  He stopped short, so abruptly that Ruth bumped into him.

  If the creature had been alive, the impact would have knocked his aim off.

  I’ll have to mention that to her... watch out for my gun.

  Ruth let out a surprised gasp as Ivan played his flashlight beam across the dead alien.

  It was hideous. The closest thing Ivan could compare it to was an iguana ... a four-meter-long iguana with desiccated openings covering its body.

  Evidently, it had been dead for some time. Its punctured, scaly skin was rotting and peeling away.

  Apparently not tasty to scavengers, Ivan thought.

  The belly of the creature had also split open, exposing a waxy, red honeycombed internal structure, looking more like shiny stone than flesh. The visible organs all black with rot... and then Ivan saw that those organs were dotted with thumb-sized white “worms.”

  Waxy tubes the size of small snakes.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked. She sounded so scared, even with it dead.

  “Not sure,” he replied. “Nasty, hmm?”

  Ruth moved closer, bending at the waist to inspect it.

  “Uh, it looks dead, but still I wouldn’t get too close.”

  Her eyes looked at the seething mass of white worms, consuming what was left of the rotting flesh.

  Annie stayed back, gun lowered at the thing as if expecting the worms to jump up at her.

  Ivan saw her swing her flashlight beam around, pistol aimed, taking it all in.

  “What the hell is this place?” she asked.

  “Years ago, we camped up here ... when we first arrived,” Ivan said.

  “The Runners?”

  Ivan nodded.

  “Looks like there’s been some excavating going on since then.”

  Ivan nodded again as he directed his flashlight beam toward the back of the cave, the light swallowed by the darkness.

  The cave floor up ahead was littered with numerous motionless forms.

  “We ... the Runners used Omega Nine as a base for a while ... until the miners showed up.”

  “What happened then?” Ruth asked.

  Ivan shrugged.

  “Nothing for a while. We left them alone. They left us alone.”

  “So what’s in here?” Annie asked. She took a few tentative steps forward, her flashlight beam playing across the assortment of corpses. Dozens of different alien species in various stages of decay.

  “Beats the hell out of me. It wasn’t like this by the time I went to prison.” A breath. The air... even that smelled different here. “And Kyros didn’t bother to send me any updates.”

  Keeping a safe distance, Ivan led the party around the first corpse. But there were more ahead.

  Plenty more.

  Five of the corpses looked like fish with thick, heavily muscled legs and short arms.

  Don’t see that every day! Ivan thought.

  Several others were more vaguely humanoid—a few as tall as five meters; others, short, dwarfish.

  Some wore clothes of different material and styles. An assortment of equipment—some familiar, but not all—lay scattered across the dirt floor. The stench of rot was thick.

  “You know what it looks like?” Jordan said from the rear of the group.

  “What?”

  “Like all these creatures were coming in, going deeper into the cave when someone—”

  “Or something,” Ivan said.

  “Yeah, or something stopped them dead in their tracks.”

  “Like us.”

  Ivan nodded at that.

  What killed them?

  He looked at the corpses for indications of how they had died but saw no obvious wounds. Of course, with the decomposition, it was impossible to tell.

  “Is that a light up ahead?” Ruth asked, drawing everyone’s attention away from the alien corpses.

  Ivan swit
ched off his flashlight and peered ahead.

  Sure enough a faint iridescent red glow filled the back of the cavern, washing the stone walls like paint.

  “Miners’ lights?” Ivan said.

  “You think miners came in here and did this?” Ruth asked.

  Ivan shook his head. “Not likely. Maybe Kyros and the boys killed the miners, took their lights.”

  “The boys?” Jordan sniffed and spat onto the cave floor. “Runners, you mean.”

  Ivan nodded and then continued moving forward; the others followed, their pace slow now.

  And, after a few twists and turns in the passage, they entered a wide area where both of the walls, hacked out of the stone, were lined with strips of cold, fluorescent mine-shaft lights.

  “Someone’s been busy,” Ivan said.

  No one laughed.

  He turned to Ruth and said, “Okay. Things might get interesting. So don’t follow so closely. You might mess up my aim if I have to shoot fast.”

  Ruth nodded her understanding.

  “See those? I recognize a few of these species,” Rodriguez said. “From pictures, anyway. Certainly not native to Omega Nine.”

  Ivan took a shallow breath, trying not to inhale the smell too deeply.

  They moved slowly, all of them tensed and waiting for ...

  What? Ivan wondered.

  For whatever had killed these creatures... or for these aliens to attack and... kill us?

  The air in the cave turned cool, but a trickle of sweat ran down his neck.

  “Hold on. Something up ahead,” he said when he noticed the lights were getting brighter as if reflected by—mirrors.

  Ivan was the first to round the corner, the others following close behind.

  Before them was a large, round stone chamber, a massive room more than twenty meters wide.

  And sure enough, the walls were covered by a variety of mirrors of varying sizes, placed at various angles. The effect was that of an old-fashioned fun house on a huge scale.

  Reflections doubled and redoubled, receding to infinity and creating a weird dizzying effect, but behind—or inside—the mirrors, the view was still dark.

  The effect was confusing, disorienting.

  Behind the criss-cross of lights, Ivan thought he caught a hint of motion in the darkness. It was reflected, so he wasn’t sure exactly where it was, but there was someone ...

  His brother? One of the Runners?

  He raised and fired his pulse pistol.

  The blast of energy shot out, punching one mirror, shattering it and leaving a large spiderweb pattern. But the flare of the blast reflected off the mirrors and ricocheted with a sizzle back and forth and all around the chamber.

  Before the zigzagging light faded, it sliced the air inches from Jordan’s head.

  The gunner dropped to the cave floor and rolled to one side to avoid it. As he got up onto his knees, he glanced back at Ivan.

  “Let’s not do that again unless we have to,” Jordan said quietly.

  “Agreed.”

  Annie came up close to the two of them. “What the hell is this place?”

  “Something to stop us, give us something to think about?” Ivan said.

  Ruth, Sinjira, and Rodriguez were all hanging back.

  “Let’s take this nice and slow.”

  Ivan started leading them into the room again.

  And as he did, the infinite reflections shifted in all directions, creating a dizzying optical illusion.

  Dozens, maybe hundreds of their reflections moved across the mirrors’ surfaces.

  “Did anyone else see something ... in the shadows?” Ivan asked.

  Had it been an illusion? More fun in this hall of mirrors?

  “See what?” Annie said, looking from reflection to reflection, poised, ready for an attack. The darkness in the background of the mirrors created depth to the reflections.

  “I thought I saw ... dunno... someone, maybe.”

  His voice drifted off as he moved forward, hanging close to the wall, gun ready. He waved the others to follow, but they were hanging back. Cautious.

  Then: “Ivan ...” Ruth’s voice rose sharply. “On your leg. Your left leg.”

  Ivan looked down and saw the tiny spot of a red laser beam moving slowly up his leg toward his crotch. It crossed his hip and then centered on his chest.

  He turned quickly to one side an instant before a bolt of blue light flashed through the air.

  It hit the mirror behind him and reflected in an intersecting pattern of light that instantly filled the room with dozens—hundreds—of deadly blue beams.

  The air was filled with the stinging smell of ozone.

  Wherever the blue beam hit the cave floor, it kicked up an explosive line of rocks and dust.

  Ruth and everyone else froze where they stood.

  Ivan raised his rifle slowly and looked around.

  Not moving. Breathing hard ... thinking.

  “Nobody move.” His voice was not as steady as he would have liked. Everyone—even Jordan—had stopped in their tracks.

  “What the hell?” Annie asked.

  “The thing’s motion activated,” Ivan said.

  He narrowed his eyes and scanned the surfaces of the mirrors, trying to see not the reflections, but the darkness behind them... and the figure, reflected dozens of times, that he knew was lurking somewhere behind one of the mirrors.

  “See? There,” he called out, pointing to his left.

  The shadowy figure moved, but as soon as Ivan focused on it, it appeared in several other mirrors, moving around the room in various directions.

  Had to be Kyros, crazed, toying with them. Hiding behind the mirrors.

  But which one?

  “I don’t like this,” Jordan said.

  “Did anyone see where that figure came from?” Ivan shouted.

  “From the left, I thought,” Annie said.

  “N-no.” Rodriguez rubbed his upper lip. “I’m pretty sure it came from in front of us.”

  “I was sure it came from the right,” Sinjira said.

  “All right! All right!” Ivan said. He stared at the chip in the side of Sinjira’s head. Blinking. Recording.

  Maybe record us all dying for someone else to find...if they can.

  “Ivan, we can’t just stay here doing nothing,” Jordan said.

  Ivan nodded.

  They had to do something.

  Moving slowly, he knelt down until he could touch the floor. Scooping up a handful of dirt, he straightened up and then, with a swift motion, he threw the dirt into the air and ducked to one side.

  The bolt of blue light shot out again, and the blast reflected off the multiple mirrors in a crazy web pattern.

  One bolt grazed Annie, tearing through her shirtsleeve and the strap of her backpack.

  She let out a yelp of pain but didn’t react—didn’t move.

  From his crouch, Ivan saw something amazing.

  It was drifting in the dust, for only a moment, suspended in the room, a matrix of thin, intersecting red laser beams filling the room with a dense web.

  “Okay,” Ivan said. “I got it.”

  “Right,” Jordan said. “If we break a beam, the lasers shoots.”

  Annie was looking frustrated.

  The dust slowly settled, and the red laser beams gradually disappeared. Ivan—standing there motionless—wondered how the hell they could make it through this trap without someone tripping the bolts again.

  They’d been lucky so far. The one reflected shot had caused only a minor wound to Annie.

  They might not be so lucky a third time.

  “You notice something?” Jordan said from the back of the line. His reflection was multiplied in the fun house mirrors—like everyone else’s.